his own salvation. Again Maximilian proffered him the Presidency-now with the condition of a free exit for the French arms. But Diaz quietly referred him to the wandering President.

Thrown entirely on his own resources for men, money, and arms-and even at times bled of his levies by the worried government-Diaz merely went at it the harder. Known for scrupulousness, he secured voluntary loans where forced loans had been hopeless. Gathering up what men and material he could, he besieged Puebla, with six field-pieces against her hundred. It was his third turn at Puebla, twice as besieged, now as besieger. In the three weeks of the investment he was everywhere, and survived not only the usual perils of the assault, but was dug out whole from under an adobe wall. Learning that an army as large as his own was on its way to re-enforce the besieged, he ordered all the preparations for withdrawing. Not only the enemy but his own officers took him to be headed for Mexico, and both approved his wisdom under the circumstances. But though the Spanish calendar has no special associations with April 1, the date was à propos. That night his army kept their teeth on surprising news. Before dawn of April 2 (1867) Diaz made a feint on the

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south of the city, and followed with a desperate assault all along the line. took it point by point, by hand; and at daylight had scored his greatest battle and redeemed Puebla.

Amid the reprisals of these embittered struggles Diaz had achieved an honorable distinction for humanity to his prisoners; and this became no small factor in his successes. Here at Puebla he pardoned the captured officers, who fully expected a fusillade, and among them the officious fellow who had added $1000 from his own pocket to the price set on Porfirio's head after his escape from this same city.

Marching up from his great victory, the hero of Puebla met the enemy's reenforcements and ran them back to Mexico in "the Five Days' Battle." Shutting up Marquez in the capital, but unwilling to bombard that splendid city, Diaz put on the thumb-screws with patient deliberation. Escobedo finally overcame the far inferior force with which Maximilian had held out so long against him in Querétaro. June 19 (1867) the ill-fated Emperor and his two stanch generals were executed, and next day Mexico surrendered to Diaz. People noted that the victorious general came in unostentatiously, and fell to setting things in order, but that he was ready with a splendid demon

stration when the long-exiled President returned, July 15. His task done, Diaz resigned, and after serving for a few months, by request, in a reorganization of the army, retired quietly to private life.

His native city met him with open arms; and besides the highest civic honors gave him in fee simple the estate of La Noria. Here for a couple of years Diaz lived as a peaceful manufacturer of cane sugar and a man of family, having been married by proxy, on the day of his victory at Puebla, to Delfina Ortega y Reyes.

The Presidential campaign of 1867 was marked by new convulsions in Mexico. The Progresistas made Diaz their standard-bearer, but with the machine at his back Juarez was declared re-elected, and Diaz refused to contest. In 1871 the Indian President, who had held office since 1857, was again nominally elected. In behalf of the reforms promised under the Constitution of 1857, but never instituted, Diaz issued from Oaxaca the protest known as the Pronunciamento of La Noria."

Juarez was already a changed man by failing health and growing blindness to the needs of the nation. July 18, 1872, death ended this strange, mute, stubborn, circumscribed, but great career. Lerdo de Tejada, in whom under Mexican laws rested the right of succession, was elected President in October. He offered Diaz high positions, but the Oaxacan went back to his sugar-making.

In 1874 the incumbent, a scholar and a gentleman, but neither a large ruler nor a large patriot, had the country by the ears, partly by mismanagement, partly by showing his design to capture a second term. Revolutions broke out all over the republic, and the famous "plan of Tuxtepec" was promulgated. Among the prominent Mexicans proscribed by Lerdo was his most dangerous rival; and selling off his property for a song, Diaz retired to the United States. In March, 1876, he crossed the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas, with forty men, and issued a pronunciamento. His forty soon multiplied by ten, and marching on the Lerdist gar rison of Matamoros, he captured seven hundred prisoners and eighteen cannon; next beating the larger force of Fuero at Icamole. But finding it impossible to break through to the distant south, he returned to New Orleans, and sailed in disguise for Vera Cruz. At Tampico a lot of his Matamoros prisoners came aboard the

steamer, and he was recognized. Slipping overboard by night in the shark-infested harbor, he started to swim ashore, but was overhauled and carried back. It was perhaps the most ticklish of all his personal hazards, many and great as they have been. But the purser took a hand, and deceived the captain by throwing overboard a life- preserver. Diaz lay for a week cooped inside the sofa on which the Lerdist officers sat for their nightly card games. At Vera Cruz he got ashore disguised as a sailor, and after many startling adventures came back to Oaxaca, where he rallied a force of 4000 men.

After the alleged re-election of Lerdo, against which even the president of the Supreme Court rose in revolt. General Alatorre was sent to run down Diaz. At Tecoac he caught him. The battle was long and sharp, but though outnumbered, Diaz won. He held his men in hand till the crisis, and then, leading the charge in person, broke Alatorre's army in two, and captured its artillery, baggage, and 3000 prisoners. From the field of Tecoac he marched on Mexico. Lerdo fled via Acapulco to the United States, “taking the cash," and on the 23d of November Diaz entered the capital amid general rejoicing. Five days later he assumed the provisional Presidency, and in April, 1877, was elected constitutional President of the republic. Lerdo promoted several uprisings, which were easily put down, and Iglesias, the Supreme Court claimant, returned from his hiding to private life.

This coup made the beginnings of Mexico as a prosperous and modern nation. For the first time in her history since the revolt from viceregal rule she had at the reins a hand strong enough and a head clear enough. Peace rose upon the wrack of fifty years of chaos, and progress followed after peace. Best of all, a national spirit began to be welded among the fac tions. When the question who could and should and would rule Mexico was taken out of the scramble, the lookers for Presidential lightning began to fall into line for more important things; while those blind enough still to fancy that the new man was just a man, and not the government of Mexico, found out their mistake.

There was singular businesslikeness in every step, and at the same time singular justice. Diaz knew a good man in friend or foe. When he could, he called to his side, and as readily, those who had been

his chief enemies as his first friends. Those who would not lend a hand he merely kept where he could have an eye on them. All a revolucionário had to do to be persona grata was to turn his talents to the uplifting of Mexico; and this policy did wonders.

The internal policy which has in so few years won statesmen from contemptuous indifference to admiration began at once. Before one realized it, Diaz was binding his disjointed states by the railroad and the telegraph. In his first year the long arrears of public officials had been paid up. In five years he had more than doubled the national revenues, and not by exactions, but by putting the public business on a civil-service basis. Roads, bridges, light-houses, wharves, public buildings, began to rise as taxes went down. The military and civil codes were revised. The army was reorganized, and the best country police in the world, the guardias rurales, were created. By them the curse of brigandage, which infested every trail and highway in Mexico, has been wiped out. Reformed diplomatic relations were established with the outer world. The national credit was raised

from the dead. And throughout the length and breadth of the long-wasted country the public school began to rise. Primary instruction, normal schools, agricultural and industrial training, fairs, factories, and the development of the soil -by all such steps united Mexico began suddenly to come up out of her low estate. It was some time before she met much welcome; and the cool stand of Diaz in marking a dead-line along the frontier, and advising our General Ord that it must not be overstepped in pursuit of Indians or other things, had like to have made trouble. But a year after his election to the Presidency Diaz was officially recognized by our government, and Grant's visit to Mexico in 1880 did much to civilize our feelings toward the neighbor republic.

Then came the interregnum of Manuel Gonzalez, "El Mocho "-a man of superb courage and of his word, but little other morals-who brought progress to a standstill. In 1880 Diaz lost his wife and her babe- the heaviest blow that has ever reached him amid all his perils. He was for a time Secretary of Fomento under Gonzalez, Senator from Morelos, and Gov

elected President to succeed Gonzalez, and was inaugurated December 1, 1884, with severe simplicity. Last year he took the oath which inaugurates his present (fifth) term, which has every promise of being his most successful one. The perfection of his remarkable system of public education, and of his hardly less masterly scheme of railroad and harbor develop ment, is the ambition of this term, which is to be his last. And to the question first on our lips-"but when Diaz dies or has done?"-he has, I think, provided the answer. He has set the feet of his people in the paths of progress. He has